BOB GARFIELD: From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. In recent days, the Bush administration has exerted itself, back-pedaling from pronouncements it made on the eve of war and beyond, related to the level of threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Part of the process has involved blaming the media, as when White House spokesman Scott McLellan said this week: [CLIP PLAYS]

SCOTT McLELLAN: I think some in the media have chosen to use the word "imminent." Those weren't word-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

REPORTER: The president--

SCOTT McLELLAN: -- those weren't words-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

REPORTER: --the president-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

SCOTT McLELLAN: --those were not words-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

REPORTER: -- [...?...] never used that word.

SCOTT McLELLAN: -- those were not words we used.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld used it. So did McLellan's predecessor, Ari Fleischer. And actually, McLellan himself used it last February. True, the president didn't. But he did call it, among other things, a threat of "unique urgency," which sounds pretty imminent to me. There are many ways in which ideas ebb and flow in the ether of the media, and we asked Hendrick Hertzberg, editor and writer for the New Yorker and former speechwriter for President Carter, to help us go through them. Rick, welcome to the show.

HENDRICK HERTZBERG: Thank you.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So I guess the most obvious way to remove ideas from the ether is to stop talking about them, and you pointed out in your article in the New Yorker recently that there were glaring omissions in the State of the Union speech.

HENDRICK HERTZBERG: Well, one of them, of course, was Mars, which had been the topic of the day the week previously. But when it became clear that the mission to Mars was a non-starter as far as public opinion was concerned, it was quickly dropped from the State of the Union. But of course there were plenty of other things that were dropped from the State of the Union too, or that never appeared. The environment, jobs, things like that.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:The words we did hear, though, were pretty much related to national security. We heard "war" a dozen times, and derivatives of terror 20 times, you counted. Do you think this is an effective way of framing the debate and keeping control over the coverage?

HENDRICK HERTZBERG: Well, it's an effective way of trying. It's the only way they have of trying. They want to focus the public discussion from now through the election basically on two topics. One is the war on terror and national security, and the other is the tax cuts and the theory that they have stimulated the economy. These are pretty much all the administration wants to talk about, apart from social issues, like to the exclusion of all others -- probably gay marriage. That's the three-pronged rhetorical approach of the Bush campaign, judging from the State of the Union.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:What about changing vocabulary, playing with words, moving the goal posts. This week, for instance, weapons inspector David Kay resigned, saying that he didn't believe there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq now and perhaps never were. How has the administration dealt with that?

HENDRICK HERTZBERG: Well, one way is, as you say, by shifting vocabulary slightly. What was once an "immediate" threat is now described as having been a "gathering" threat. It's an interesting phrase. In a way, it recalls Winston Churchill's phrase, "a gathering storm" for the period before World War II. So a gathering threat is a threat that isn't quite a threat yet, and that is now how the administration is picturing Iraq as far as weapons of mass destruction are concerned. You might call it a "vapor" threat.

HENDRICK HERTZBERG:Well, in that case, it's even cleverer than I thought, because it seems to mean both at once, and that's the most valuable kind of word in politics.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:What about obfuscation, as in the president's State of the Union reference to "weapons of mass destruction program-related activities."

HENDRICK HERTZBERG: Yes. That's a remarkable addition to the language. It's a rhetorical dodge that was based simply on lifting a phrase directly from a David Kay report, so that it would be bullet-proof from criticism on the weapons of mass destruction front, but that's exactly the calculation Gore made when he talked about "no controlling legal authority." A bullet-proof legalism that's open to an awful lot of ridicule.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Rick, what's your take on loose cannons? I mean back in September of last year there was a furor over Vice President Cheney's statement claiming a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and he was fact-checked at the time and found to be wrong, and it seemed to be a dead and buried issue. And then last week, the vice president said this: [CLIP PLAYS]

RICHARD CHENEY: I continue to believe -- I think there's, there's overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi government.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:So what in your mind is a journalist to do? I mean when does an assertion that's been disproved stop being disproved and become currency again in a war of words?

HENDRICK HERTZBERG: A continual reminder that there are other views of this matter, including coming from the administration is pretty much all the press can do. At least that's all the news side of the press can do, and the press has been doing that. I don't think the press has made the mistake that it made during the Joe McCarthy era when McCarthy's statements were simply reported without any kind of independent check on them.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:But in McCarthy's day, he didn't have to contend with ubiquitous television. A statement made on television by a politician seems, at least, to trump any correctives that are offered in the pages of the nation's best newspapers.

HENDRICK HERTZBERG: Well, that will become increasingly less true as the political campaign continues. We've had now for the last couple of weeks for the first time since Bush was inaugurated voices of opposition to Bush prominent in the media, being heard regularly, and that's because of the Democratic primary campaign, and that's going to remain true at least through next November, and it changes the climate, and it changes the atmosphere in which the press operates.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Are you proposing that the best corrective is a perpetual election?

HENDRICK HERTZBERG:Well, we have a perpetual election in this country. But we do have a one-sided conservative echo chamber in the opinion media, on the electronic level anyway, in radio and cable and television. It's mostly dominated by conservative voices. So that, combined with the control of both houses of Congress and the presidency by conservative Republicans gives an impression of a kind of single voice coming out of Washington and the media, and that's why the election campaign, with this sudden emergence of Democrats criticizing the administration seems so startling and new and fresh and in-- to some people, encouraging.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Rick Hertzberg, thanks a lot.

HENDRICK HERTZBERG: My pleasure.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Rick Hertzberg is a former speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter, and currently senior editor and staff writer at the New Yorker.

BOB GARFIELD:For most of the Bush presidency and especially since 9/11, the public has been eager to believe in the president, including his stated reasons for going to war in Iraq, and even when the central reason was proved to be largely groundless, a majority of the American people, polls show, still cling to it. Andrew Kohut is director of the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, and he routinely takes the temperature of public opinion. He joins me now to discuss how and why certain beliefs persist in the public's mind and what it takes to dislodge them. Andy, welcome back to OTM.

ANDREW KOHUT: Happy to be with you.

BOB GARFIELD: Much has been made of the conspiracy theories that continue to proliferate in the Arab and Muslim world, for example that the United States was behind the attacks on 9/11 and so forth, and yet, two years after the 9/11 attacks, a Washington Post poll found that 69 percent of Americans believed it was likely that Saddam Hussein had a hand in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. [LAUGHTER] What does it take to get an idea like this lodged in the public consciousness? And what does it take to dislodge it?

ANDREW KOHUT: I don't know, but it ain't happening. The percentage of people who think that the Saddam capture will lead to finding weapons of mass destruction, for example, is as low as 34 percent. But as many as 56 percent said it will lead to a revelation about the linkage between Saddam and Al Qaeda. This is a notion that's fixed in the minds of many Americans. Saddam has been our enemy. Al Qaeda has become our enemy, and they both come from the same part of the world, and disconnecting them in the American mind is not easy.

BOB GARFIELD:Now the Pew Center makes a living keeping its finger on the pulse of what the American public thinks about the press and the press's relationship with the government. Is there anything else striking that you've found --any more misinformation or even disinformation that the public seems unwilling to let go of?

ANDREW KOHUT: Well there are a lot of things that the public believes that no amount of information from the press or political leaders can change. One notion is that our percentage of foreign aid is so much greater than other leading nations. Americans believe this, and when you tell people how little it actually is, it doesn't sink in!

BOB GARFIELD:I want to get back to the question of how these ideas get dislodged from the collective consciousness. Historically speaking, are there any assumptions that the American people have made -- maybe on the basis of bad information from the government or elsewhere that people just sort of change their minds on, and what does it take to get there?

ANDREW KOHUT: What it takes to get there, basically, is some event which says this is no longer the case or this is not the case. Let's take the example of the war in Vietnam. Support for the war in Vietnam, despite mounting casualties, remained pretty high through 1966, 1967 and into the first two months of 1968. Then came the Tet offensive, and all of a sudden we had a divided opinion on whether the war was the right thing to do, and then slowly the divided opinion was transformed into majority opposition. But it took two and a half years and many, many casualties and high costs to get the public to change its mind. It wasn't convinced. Tet convinced it.

BOB GARFIELD:Presidencies have been lost -- in fact, Bush presidencies have been lost -- when the public stops deciding to, you know, read the president's lips on an oft-stated promise. I guess the risk of finally losing credibility is politically and otherwise a very serious one.

ANDREW KOHUT: In January, a CBS/New York Times poll found that only 33 percent thought that the administration before the war was telling us what they really knew about weapons of mass destruction, down from 44 percent in November. And the percentage of people saying they were either hiding stuff or out and out lying has risen from 53 percent two months ago to 60 percent now. At this point, this credibility issue is not affecting support for the war. Right now people are saying they weren't telling us the truth; they were exaggerating. Only 21 percent think they were out and out lying. But still people think it was worth doing.

BOB GARFIELD: Do any of your data suggest or do you have a sense that some sort of tipping point is approaching?

ANDREW KOHUT:Well, we do in fact have 63 percent of people in a ABC survey at the end of the year saying we can justify this war even if we never find weapons of mass destruction. The tipping point, then, is not the absence of these weapons but potentially the casualties getting to such an extent and such a level that people say the costs are not worth the benefits. And right now the equation is the benefits are worth the costs.

BOB GARFIELD: Well, Andy, as always, thank you very much.

ANDREW KOHUT: Well, you're welcome, Bob.

BOB GARFIELD: Andrew Kohut is director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. [MUSIC]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Coming up, Lord Hutton blames the BBC, and why our government's right to keep secrets may be based on a 50 year old fraud.

BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media, from NPR.
BOB GARFIELD: For most of the Bush presidency and especially since 9/11, the public has been eager to believe in the president, including his stated reasons for going to war in Iraq, and even when the central reason was proved to be largely groundless, a majority of the American people, polls show, still cling to it. Andrew Kohut is director of the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, and he routinely takes the temperature of public opinion. He joins me now to discuss how and why certain beliefs persist in the public's mind and what it takes to dislodge them. Andy, welcome back to OTM.

ANDREW KOHUT: Happy to be with you.

BOB GARFIELD: Much has been made of the conspiracy theories that continue to proliferate in the Arab and Muslim world, for example that the United States was behind the attacks on 9/11 and so forth, and yet, two years after the 9/11 attacks, a Washington Post poll found that 69 percent of Americans believed it was likely that Saddam Hussein had a hand in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. [LAUGHTER] What does it take to get an idea like this lodged in the public consciousness? And what does it take to dislodge it?

ANDREW KOHUT: I don't know, but it ain't happening. The percentage of people who think that the Saddam capture will lead to finding weapons of mass destruction, for example, is as low as 34 percent. But as many as 56 percent said it will lead to a revelation about the linkage between Saddam and Al Qaeda. This is a notion that's fixed in the minds of many Americans. Saddam has been our enemy. Al Qaeda has become our enemy, and they both come from the same part of the world, and disconnecting them in the American mind is not easy.

BOB GARFIELD:Now the Pew Center makes a living keeping its finger on the pulse of what the American public thinks about the press and the press's relationship with the government. Is there anything else striking that you've found --any more misinformation or even disinformation that the public seems unwilling to let go of?

ANDREW KOHUT: Well there are a lot of things that the public believes that no amount of information from the press or political leaders can change. One notion is that our percentage of foreign aid is so much greater than other leading nations. Americans believe this, and when you tell people how little it actually is, it doesn't sink in!

BOB GARFIELD:I want to get back to the question of how these ideas get dislodged from the collective consciousness. Historically speaking, are there any assumptions that the American people have made -- maybe on the basis of bad information from the government or elsewhere that people just sort of change their minds on, and what does it take to get there?

ANDREW KOHUT: What it takes to get there, basically, is some event which says this is no longer the case or this is not the case. Let's take the example of the war in Vietnam. Support for the war in Vietnam, despite mounting casualties, remained pretty high through 1966, 1967 and into the first two months of 1968. Then came the Tet offensive, and all of a sudden we had a divided opinion on whether the war was the right thing to do, and then slowly the divided opinion was transformed into majority opposition. But it took two and a half years and many, many casualties and high costs to get the public to change its mind. It wasn't convinced. Tet convinced it.

BOB GARFIELD:Presidencies have been lost -- in fact, Bush presidencies have been lost -- when the public stops deciding to, you know, read the president's lips on an oft-stated promise. I guess the risk of finally losing credibility is politically and otherwise a very serious one.

ANDREW KOHUT: In January, a CBS/New York Times poll found that only 33 percent thought that the administration before the war was telling us what they really knew about weapons of mass destruction, down from 44 percent in November. And the percentage of people saying they were either hiding stuff or out and out lying has risen from 53 percent two months ago to 60 percent now. At this point, this credibility issue is not affecting support for the war. Right now people are saying they weren't telling us the truth; they were exaggerating. Only 21 percent think they were out and out lying. But still people think it was worth doing.

BOB GARFIELD: Do any of your data suggest or do you have a sense that some sort of tipping point is approaching?

ANDREW KOHUT:Well, we do in fact have 63 percent of people in a ABC survey at the end of the year saying we can justify this war even if we never find weapons of mass destruction. The tipping point, then, is not the absence of these weapons but potentially the casualties getting to such an extent and such a level that people say the costs are not worth the benefits. And right now the equation is the benefits are worth the costs.

BOB GARFIELD: Well, Andy, as always, thank you very much.

ANDREW KOHUT: Well, you're welcome, Bob.

BOB GARFIELD: Andrew Kohut is director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. [MUSIC]

copyright 2004 WNYC Radio
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. This week in London, Lord Hutton declared the BBC the loser in its long-running battle with the government of Tony Blair. Last year, BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan charged the Blair government with, quote, "sexing up" documents to bolster its case for the war in Iraq. The government was outraged, but the BBC stood by its story, and the network's alleged source, government scientist David Kelly, killed himself in the wake of the scandal. The Hutton Inquiry was convened to find the guilty party. It found the BBC. [CLIP PLAYS]

LORD HUTTON: The allegations that Mr. Gilligan was intending to broadcast in respect of the government and the preparation of the dossier were very grave allegations in relation to a subject of great importance, and I consider that the editorial system which the BBC permitted was defective in that Mr. Gilligan was allowed to broadcast his report at 6 or 7 a.m. without editors having seen the script of what he was going to say and having considered whether it should be approved.

LORD RYDER: I have no hesitation in apologizing unreservedly for our errors and to the individuals whose reputations were affected by them.

BOB GARFIELD: WBUR's Michael Goldfarb has been monitoring reactions to the Hutton Report from London.

MICHAEL GOLDFARB: I think that what Lord Hutton didn't take into account in his very narrow judicial remit was the longstanding dynamic between the BBC and British governments of either political stripe. The BBC is always relied on by the government in, in a country where most of the press is nakedly partisan to be very straightforward, and of course it always disappoints each government, because governments think, well, BBC should sort of be giving our message unfiltered to the people. For years before the Iraq war, the BBC was a constant recipient of criticism from Downing Street, and so when it finally happened that Andrew Gilligan made these "sexed up" claims about the government's use of intelligence going to war, the BBC dug in its heels and said, well you know, you just can't push us around. And of course, fatally, this was an instance where a BBC journalist had made an error, and by the time they got around to investigating it, processes had been set in motion that ultimately led to David Kelly's suicide.

BOB GARFIELD:Well there seems to be a subtext here. With the resignations, the BBC response seems to be well, Lord Hutton, thank you very much --we're abashed, of course, and all the appropriate leaders will fall on their swords, but of course you really don't understand the context, and by the way, you don't really understand how journalism works, do you? Are you sensing that kind of response from the Beeb?

MICHAEL GOLDFARB: The BBC has been excessively, I think, fair and really looked at itself with great scrutiny. The rest of the British press, however, has taken to calling this a whitewash. The Independent newspaper, the day after the Hutton Report was published, above the fold -- it was all white -- except for one small headline that said "Whitewash." And then below the fold it was an editorial saying that Lord Hutton had missed the point. Interestingly enough, if Tony Blair had wanted the judgment of Lord Hutton to end his misery, it hasn't, because the press I think will probably be even more aggressive in trying to find out why there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and how it came to be that the case for war was built on the fact that the intelligence seemed to indicate that there was.

BOB GARFIELD:Now, as you read the press in England, putting aside the question of whitewash, is there an overall sense that Lord Hutton's report was somehow fundamentally naive -- that he just simply doesn't understand how journalism is accomplished and the relationship between the BBC and the government?

MICHAEL GOLDFARB: The general feeling is this man is an establishment judge, so they, they sort of knew what they were going to get, and not unsurprisingly, the establishment judge found that more or less the civil service and the government behaved honorably. But the amazing thing is that Gavyn Davies, who resigned as the chairman of the board of governors and Greg Dyke, who resigned as director general, were both members of that establishment. Gavyn Davies' wife actually works for Gordon Brown as chancellor of the exchequer, and the anointed successor to Tony Blair, and yet these two men and Downing Street were somehow not able to make a private personal call to just cool off temperatures. I mean the one argument in favor of a closed establishment is at least gentlemen of a like mind can sit around and have a whiskey and sort the problems of the world. But in this case, gentlemen of a like mind ended up having this enormous ego contest.

BOB GARFIELD:I want to ask you about the lasting effects. The Beeb -- it isn't merely a network. It is an institution in United Kingdom, kind of like the monarchy, I suppose, because it's resented and revered at the same time. What do you think the impact will be on the standing of the BBC for the British public?

MICHAEL GOLDFARB: Well, it's really interesting, Bob, that you should choose the monarchy, because it is an institutional part of British society, the BBC, but rather like the monarchy, it needs to modernize. And yet, if you were to hold a referendum on turning Britain into a Republican, a modern society, people would still vote to keep their monarchy in place. Same with the BBC. People complain about it all the time. They pay a tax to sustain it. Yet if you were to say we're going to eliminate the BBC, I think there'd be a huge outcry in this country. The BBC is a cultural reflection of the British, and perhaps you could even say Britain's always difficult encounters with modernization are simply reflected in the BBC.

BOB GARFIELD: All right, Michael. Well, thanks very much.

MICHAEL GOLDFARB: My pleasure, Bob.

BOB GARFIELD: Michael Goldfarb of WBUR reported to us from London.
BOB GARFIELD: In Rome, the eyes of the world are focused on Pope John Paul II, now well into his 9th decade, and though he shows signs of Parkinson's disease and fatigue, his pace hasn't slowed much. In recent days, he told Vice President Cheney that the U.S. must work for peace, expressed alarm over the drop in French priests and called for more unity within the Catholic Church, and evidently, blessed break-dancing. But the world still awaits his demise, including two infamous British bookies who this month offered odds on the Pope's successor. Also waiting, as Megan Williams reported a year ago, are the media, and nothing much has changed.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: It's not something the Vatican or media outlets want to talk about, but for the past several years preparations for the pope's death have been moving along at a fast clip. Television networks from around the world have been caught in bidding wars for balconies that provide the prized shot of St. Peter's Square. [CHURCH BELLS AND ORGANS PLAYING] When the pope dies, the cardinals gather in the Sistine Chapel to elect a new one. Once he's chosen, a plume of black smoke lifting out of St. Peter's will turn white. This is to let the world know there's a new pope, and it's the shot that TV networks are willing to pay a lot of money for. Robert Mickens is a Vatican specialist. He's covered the pope for the past 10 years, much of that at Vatican Radio. Mickens says that all the nervous gearing up for the pope's death has been going on for about a decade, but with each passing year the tension increases, along with the price the networks are paying to secure a good shot of St. Peter's.

ROBERT MICKENS: Right from the very beginning -- I mean already back in '93 this whole thing - the death watch - started, and people - the news networks - big media started looking for spaces to do their setup for the whole event which is going to be a couple of weeks long -from the time he dies - the funeral - and then the conclave. Because I mean this is a whole package deal, and they want to be on site for that, so you've got people that already were paying a yearly deposit just to reserve a balcony or a rooftop of a nice hotel with St. Peter's in the background for that day when the pope is sick and dies so they can set up.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Networks themselves won't disclose how much they're paying, nor will landlords who have been sworn to secrecy. But Tommaso DiBenedetti, a journalist for the Italian daily Il Mattino says that most of the balconies are going for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and one that directly overlooks St. Peter's Square has gone to a major U.S. network for a whole lot more.

TOMMASO DiBENEDETTI: One network pays 2 millions of dollars for 3 days of a balcony. The balcony is looking over St. Peter's Square. Cost -- 2 million dollars for 3 days. And that is - sure.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: But the preparations don't stop with location. Media networks are lining up Vatican experts to provide round the clock commentary during the funeral and conclave.

JOHN ALLEN: It will be near 9/11 in terms of levels of coverage. But not just in the States, but internationally. I mean it becomes the biggest story in the world for roughly a month. And, and obviously, you know, media outlets want to be ready for it.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: John Allen is author of the recently-published book called The Conclave. He's also just signed a hefty contract with CNN to be its commentator during the funeral and conclave. He says true Vatican experts like himself are few and far between. It's a difficult beat to cover. The Vatican is renowned for its arcane language and bureaucracy as well as blocking access to the media. So people like Allen who know their way around come at a premium.

JOHN ALLEN: I mean to put it crassly: we have a seller's market these days for Vatican expertise. Because, you know, people are obviously fascinated by the question of what might happen when this pope dies. Who might be the next pope and how will that pope get chosen and how does this mysterious centuries old process really work? And what are the politics, you know, beneath the smoke and mirrors? And so what it has meant is that I find myself much busier than I was at this time, say, two years ago.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Not only are experts like Allen being called upon to comment. Most have lucrative book contracts. Allen himself will have to turn around a biography of the new pope within weeks. He says he's done his homework and isn't worried about pulling it off, but he is concerned about all the competition.

JOHN ALLEN: I can speak with confidence in the English-speaking world. Every publisher I know has someone lined up to do a biography of the new pope when it happens. So there will be a flood of these titles, and, and the logic there is there will be a few months when anything with the new pope's picture on it is going to fly off shelves.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: And a number of publishers have already hedged their bets by putting out books before the pope has died. Even John Allen has a section in The Conclave outlining the top contenders for the job. This is risky. Several on his list died as the book was being printed, and as Robert Mickens points out, so far this pope has defied the odds.

ROBERT MICKENS: And then the whole thing just - as, as his health has deteriorated, people have been making this guessing game. I think it's interesting that Peter Hebblethwaite wrote a book right around the same time called The Next Pope. Well, Peter Hebblethwaite died, [LAUGHS] and so-- I mean the pope should have wrote [sic] a book called The Next Hebblethwaite and it would have made more sense. [CLIP OF POPE GIVING MASS IN ST. PETER'S] [WITH RESPONSES FROM CONGREGATION] [CONGREGATION APPLAUDS AND CHEERS]

BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media, from NPR.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield with a few of your letters. We had a lot of reaction to my commentary that likened the Dean scream to the Wilhelm movie howl. I criticized the media for taking that campaign moment out of context, but according to Fred Kiel, I was also guilty. He writes: "I usually enjoy your show but I turned this one off in disgust after the 14th replay of Howard Dean's scream. I am not a Dean supporter, but I thought I was watching Fox News. Very poor taste, I thought. Once or twice would have been okay, but I bet you replayed his scream 25 or 30 times!"BROOKE GLADSTONE:Actually it was four. But Bob Hart of Lee, New Hampshire was among those who were intrigued with the commentary. He writes: "Dean's scream sure was like blood in the water to all the sharks that surround the field of candidates. When I heard you play back the now infamous scream, I wondered if it really was Dean or the Wilhelm. No doubt some movie sound engineer will have a laugh by using Dean's in a movie. Keep your ears peeled."BOB GARFIELD:Michael Antonoff of New York City writes to point out a serious omission in our discussion about the broadcast of the State of the Union address. "OTM failed to note that this was the first State of the Union to be broadcast in high definition. The pool feed was carried by ABC, NBC and CBS on their digital stations. Greater image detail in the widescreen picture made you feel like you were there. A missed opportunity, though, was not using surround sound. If the State of the Union had been properly miked and broadcast with discreet audio channels, we could have noted the overwrought applause coming from the right and the deafening silence from the left. Maybe next year."BROOKE GLADSTONE:We hope we hear from you before then. Write us at onthemedia@wnyc.org, and don't forget to tell us where you live and how to pronounce your name. [MUSIC]

copyright 2004 WNYC Radio
BOB GARFIELD: New Hampshire voters finally went to the polls this week, and while they voted, the rest of us watched -- and waited.

DAN RATHER: Good evening. Voting places here in the first presidential primary of Campaign '04 will be open just a little while longer -- till 8 Eastern time. So we can't tell you -- we don't yet know in what order the Democratic candidates will finish, but -- but we can tell you about the voters, including how they chose a candidate.

BOB GARFIELD:Contrast Dan Rather's somber commitment to journalistic responsibility last Tuesday with his and all the other networks' performance on Election night 2000. Few will forget the image of Rather being forced to eat his words after calling Florida for Gore and assuring viewers that they could take that to the bank. So this time around, the networks are being extra careful not to announce winners and losers until all the polls have closed, even though they have access to exit poll data much earlier than that. But political junkies --fear not. Andrew Tyndall, who tracks nightly newscasts and dissects them in the Tyndall Report, says a careful watcher can still scope out the winner as early as half past 6. Andrew, welcome to the show.

REPORTER: Heading into today, there wasn't a poll out there that had Kerry less than 11 points ahead, in a race many voters here said was about one thing -- who can beat George Bush.

HOWARD DEAN: We will not give up in New Hampshire! We will not...

REPORTER: Dean, who needs at least a second here after whooping himself out of the frontrunner spot after Iowa--

JOHN EDWARDS: I feel very good. I feel very positive, good about how things are going.

REPORTER: Edwards, looking for momentum, headed back to his native South Carolina-- [GROUP OF SUPPORTERS GIVING CONGRATULATIONS] -- and Clark, are all battling for a bounce from New Hampshire.

BOB GARFIELD: Now that seems very straightforward, Andrew. They're sort of, you know, recapitulating the opinion polls going in to Election Day. What's so odd about that?

ANDREW TYNDALL: Nothing's so odd about it. The point is that they did their own exit polls during the vote. If there had been any surprises that they knew about 90 minutes before the polls had closed, they wouldn't have said it in that order. That order, it turns out to be almost an exact prediction of what the result of the election was, right down to saying that Kerry was 11 points ahead of Dean, and I think he won by 13, didn't he?

BOB GARFIELD:[LAUGHS] What a fabulous coincidence, and what good fortune for CBS. ABC did things a slightly different way. Let's listen to some tape from World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. [CLIP PLAYS]

KATE SNOW: The Kerry campaign strategy now, Peter, is to build on any strength that they may have here in New Hampshire, to build more exposure, to try to get more support in those seven states that vote next week.

PETER JENNINGS: Many thanks, Kate. Kate Snow up with us in New Hampshire here. Governor Dean may have pleased many of his supporters today when he criticized the news media for so much coverage devoted to the speech he gave at a rally after he lost in Iowa. Tonight his campaign here is very focused on coming back. Here's ABC's Dan Harris.

ANDREW TYNDALL: Okay, now what Jennings did to tip you off as to the result was he placed the reports from the individuals who are filing from the campaigns in a particular order. Turned out that the order was the order of finish in the primary.

BOB GARFIELD: And what about NBC?

ANDREW TYNDALL:At NBC, instead of doing one on Kerry, then one on Dean, and then mentioning the also-rans, they did one on Kerry and Dean -- Kerry, the frontrunner, Dean coming from behind --and then another one on the three also-rans. All you've got to do is watch the rundown, and you can predict the result.

BOB GARFIELD:Let's just say that many viewers will be able to divine from the way these returns are coming in who's ahead and who is sucking wind. But let's just look at the wisdom of this game of wink-wink, nudge-nudge. What's the argument for doing it this way versus the argument for just simply being straightforward with the data that you have come what may?

ANDREW TYNDALL: Because, strictly speaking, the polls are still open, and voters can theoretically watch the news and either be discouraged or encouraged to vote, so they can be influencing the vote by reporting the news.

BOB GARFIELD:But if it - the code - is so easy to break [LAUGHS] wouldn't the news or the subtext of the news be just as discouraging to a prospective voter as the results of some exit poll?

ANDREW TYNDALL: You know, I sat down beforehand to watch all three of these evening newscasts on Tuesday night before I knew the results of the election. Once I'd seen all three of them, I could break the code. I don't think looking at one of them on their own, live, without videotape it would be that easy to break. Now, of course, now if you listen to me explain the code, it's going to be really easy to break.

BOB GARFIELD:All right. South Carolina is coming up. Nobody really knows who's going to win that. What shall we look for in the teasers that open the evening news broadcasts on Tuesday that will tell us who won before it really gets started?

ANDREW TYNDALL: Which state they lead with, because they've already started saying not so much South Carolina, let's look at Missouri instead, let's look at Arizona, etc, etc. Between now and next Tuesday, we're going to know which states individual candidates are running strong in, and the decision which state to emphasize is going to tell us which candidate is winning or losing the expectations game.

BOB GARFIELD: So give me a headline that could theoretically open the CBS evening news Tuesday that would mean Howard Dean is back.

ANDREW TYNDALL: Arizona -- The On-Line State Where Youth Is Active Scores a Major Upset in Tuesday's Primaries.

BOB GARFIELD: Andrew, [LAUGHS] thank you very much.

ANDREW TYNDALL: Thank you for having me.

BOB GARFIELD: Andrew Tyndall runs The Tyndall Report, a New York-based company that monitors the networks' nightly newscasts.

copyright 2004 WNYC Radio
BOB GARFIELD: Starting this month, you can go on line to check your email, pay your bills, enlarge your penis or -- begin your own presidential candidacy. Showtime Television has officially launched its American Candidate Website and is accepting applications. Those applications will be narrowed down to 12 contestants who will compete reality television-style to be the first American Candidate. In Showtime's 10-episode primary, nobody will have to start fires or eat bugs, but contestants will nonetheless have to run the humiliating and degrading gauntlet called candidacy. Emmy Award-winning and Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker R. J. Cutler, maker of The War Room and American High is behind this operation. He joins me now from the NPR studios in Los Angeles. R. J., welcome back to On the Media.

R. J. CUTLER: In the wake of the 2000 presidential election, I was approached by my executive producing partners, Jay Roche and Tom LaSalle who were responding to this sense that you have a lot of people in this country who are simply not participating in the process. Well, why is that? There was a eureka moment, [LAUGHS] kind of, in the wake of the success of American Idol when we were all sitting around with Kevin Reilly who was then the head of the cable network FX, and Kevin said "Have you ever thought about doing it American Idol style where people voted on a weekly basis and eliminated one person after another?" And that kind of triggered the current form of the show which is a weekly show. Now the show is very much not going to be like American Idol. It's meant really to be a giant simulation of a presidential election, and it will be.

BOB GARFIELD: Well I want to talk about that moment though. When Kevin Reilly uttered those words, [LAUGHTER] did everybody laugh?

R. J. CUTLER: Oh, of course.

BOB GARFIELD: But then you got thinking, didn't you? [LAUGHS]

R. J. CUTLER:Of course! Well, quite frankly, in that moment, I had the same reaction that I think we've seen replicated, you know, every time the show has been announced or spoken about in the press or wherever. There is something about the nexus of presidential politics, television, a competition culture, reality television -- all of those things that are --when you put them together, it's surprisingly revelatory. It touches a nerve. Very early on, when we first announced we were working on the show, I was doing an interview with somebody on television, and the first question she asked was "Do you mean to tell me that television is going to be involved in the selection of the next president of the United States?" And of course my reaction was, of--yes, television will be involved.

BOB GARFIELD: When wasn't it? [LAUGHS]

R. J. CUTLER: That's right.

BOB GARFIELD: Let me borrow her righteous indignation, [LAUGHTER] if not her literal question by asking you why isn't this a trivialization of the democratic process?

R. J. CUTLER:Well, certainly it could be. Or you could say, look we're going to take everything we do very, very seriously, and we're going to draw the curtain back and show how the process really works. We're going to show just how challenging it is to run for president. We're going to show the difficult decisions that have to be made between your convictions and what is politically expedient. We're going to show how polling works. We're going to show how opposition research works. We're going to show all of those things. We also want to have a perspective on presidential politics. We want to be able to illuminate its more absurd qualities, and we want to be able to reflect upon the role that the media plays, and we want to ask questions about what we're looking for in a presidential candidate.

BOB GARFIELD: Tell me mechanically how it's all going to work.

R. J. CUTLER:The mechanics have begun already. We've received thousands of requests for applications. Anybody who qualifies under the Constitution to run for president is eligible to be on our show.

BOB GARFIELD:Well you and your partners are, in effect, the smoke-filled room that's going to determine the pool of candidates. What are you looking for in that pool?

R. J. CUTLER: We want everybody who tunes in to the show to have somebody whose vision resonates with them and excites them, so we will put together a diverse group and introduce them to the viewing public this summer. And then the process will begin, and our candidates will crisscross the country. Each week we'll be in a different town. The process will begin as a retail process where the emphasis is on going door to door and meeting people and caucus-like events, and as the weeks go on and the field is narrowed, the process will be more of a wholesale process, and the emphasis will be more on media and advertising and large-scale debates. The candidates on our show will have access to seasoned political strategists. They'll have access to opposition research, research on themselves. At a certain point they'll have to choose a running mate. In every way our goal is to emulate what happens in an actual presidential campaign.

BOB GARFIELD:Allow me to end, please, with a compound hypothetical. [LAUGHTER] If the winner of American Candidate emerges to actually seek public office, and if that person does wind up eventually in the Oval Office, and if that person turns out to be a nightmare president of the United States, Doctor Frankenstein, what will you do?

R. J. CUTLER: You know, we've elected, we've elected [LAUGHS] all sorts of people to the highest office in this land, and all sorts of people to, to the Congress, to the Senate. I don't fear that we're going to do worse through a process that identifies people outside of the political class.

BOB GARFIELD: R. J. Cutler, thank you very much.

R. J. CUTLER: It's certainly my pleasure.

BOB GARFIELD:Filmmaker R. J. Cutler is creator and executive producer of American Candidate, to air on Showtime this summer. To learn more about American Candidate, click on www.AmericanCandidate.com.

copyright 2004 WNYC Radio
BROOKE GLADSTONE: In October of 1948, an Air Force plane crashed in Georgia. Nine men died, among them four civilians, and three of their widows sued. The government argued that releasing documents related to their deaths would jeopardize national security, and it won. In U.S. versus Reynolds, a new and enduring legal precedent was set by the Supreme Court. The government obtained the right to apply what's known as the "state secrets privilege." But now U.S. versus Reynolds is being challenged. The children of the dead finally have had a look at those half century-old documents and say they found no reference to anything that relates to national security. They charge the government with a cover-up, and in so doing, suggest that the case that underpins the government's right to keep so many secrets is based on a fraud. Joining me is Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School. Welcome to the show.

JONATHAN TURLEY: Thank you.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So what actually was the precedent that U.S. v. Reynolds set?

JONATHAN TURLEY: What the court said was that trial judges needed to consider privilege arguments by the government, but the court also said that courts should struggle to remove only that evidence that clearly would violate national security, and the court talked about other ways that judges could allow evidence to come in. So, the case itself really didn't give a hint of what it would become, because over the decades that followed, courts began to simply allow the privilege to be used almost unilaterally. A lot of district judges, frankly, don't want the headache of national security cases. And so when the government comes in with a silver bullet and says dismiss the whole case, a lot of judges are not complaining much.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And is it seen as a silver bullet generally in the legal community or just by government lawyers?

JONATHAN TURLEY: Well, frankly when United States/Reynolds comes around, you pretty much know the government's on the ropes. This is the thing that they pull out when their case is not going well or they've found something enormously embarrassing in the file. I've actually been in a courtroom where Reynolds was invoked, and people laughed. They actually invoked the privilege over a manual that was reportedly available on the internet, and reporters in the room were literally holding them up so the judge could see.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And the judge still went with the government.

JONATHAN TURLEY: Yes.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Well let's go back to the original case. In Reynolds, the plaintiffs here are charging, the courts could have seen that the government was lying about its national security significance if it wanted to, and it simply chose to ignore it.

JONATHAN TURLEY: I think that is true -- that the Supreme Court acted in what can only be viewed as willful blindness. At the time, it was abundantly clear to many that the Air Force was lying. That they could, in fact, produce this information, if not in the direct report, in a summary of the report. So then, in 2000, when finally these memos appear, we have this line in the memo saying "The aircraft is not considered to have been safe for flight." That was the conclusion of the report. Now even if they had redacted the entirety of the report so that the basis of that conclusion is hidden, they should have at least produced that conclusion.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:But the courts at the time decided that that report could be kept secret, and now we have Reynolds today. And how has it been applied in the prosecution of the government's war on terror?

JONATHAN TURLEY: Attorney General Ashcroft took every possible case to muster in, in support of his national security efforts. Well, Reynolds was ready-made for that, and now Reynolds has virtually become a stamp. I mean any case that involves remotely the military or national security or, you know, poultry regulations -- any type of civil liberties claim that's been brought since 9/11 has run right into Reynolds, and the government's come forward and said "Look, we can't tell you whether we're beating detainees, cause it would reveal state secrets." Well, that's bloody ridiculous. I mean if you're asking about whether detainees have been beaten, you're asking out whether a crime has occurred. That's not a matter of national security. It's a matter of criminal law.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So let's return to the current challenge to Reynolds which is called Herring versus the United States. Where does it stand?

JONATHAN TURLEY:Well, the daughter of one of the engineers on that fateful flight uncovered this smoking gun, if you will, where the, the memo which had no national security components but a heck of a lot of embarrassing stuff to say about the Air Force, they filed with the Supreme Court and said "Look -- it appears that you were lied to. You created a whole doctrine on an act of deception." Well, not surprisingly, the Supreme Court declined to take it up. This is an enormous embarrassment for them as an institution. They then filed in the federal district court, and once again the Justice Department is moving to dismiss that action. The troubling thing about these filings is the apparent lack of recourse when you find that the government lied -- not in a small way but in a way that created this massive doctrine, and if the district court dismisses this action, then there really isn't any deterrent to the government from lying. I mean it -- even when you can wave around a memo in which they clearly misled the Supreme Court of the United States, there's no recourse. Well that's going to send one hell of a message to Justice Department attorneys.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Jonathan Turley, thank you very much.

JONATHAN TURLEY: Thank you.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Jonathan Turley is a professor at George Washington University Law School.

copyright 2004 WNYC Radio
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And this week in media, a death and a departure. The death was Jack Paar's, who created something new and exciting when TV was just a baby. He did it in one of broadcasting's Crystal Palaces -- the Tonight Show -- where he reigned from 1957 to 1962, between the monarchies of entertainers Steve Allen and Comedian Johnny Carson. Paar was neither, really. He was just a curious guy who was impressed by talent and subject to mood swings -- more or less like us -- or how we might have been in the '50s. He lived on earth, and he wanted his guests to join him there, because he thought earth was a wonderful place, and because that was a side of celebrities that people like us didn't get to see. [CLIP PLAYS]

JACK PAAR: I have noticed that if you watch political programs, they are-- ask political questions, and the answers are political answers, and sometimes, I must say, I watch shows for a half hour, and when it's all over, no one's said anything when it's all over. But there is a chance that in this relaxed atmosphere of the Tonight Show you can meet people who aren't on guard, not as tense, and perhaps not as political as you would meet them on other news-type shows.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:So he didn't distinguish among the different flavors of fame. He had personal chats with rising stars and established ones, and with the most powerful people on earth. John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Fidel Castro.

JACK PAAR: ...very late in Havana, Cuba, and Fidel Castro has just come down from his suite in the Havana Hilton after days and days and days of little sleep and some sadness which happened to him -- personal sadness in Venezuela, and I'm very happy that he came down from his suite right upstairs to talk to me tonight. Mr. Castro, I can say not as a politician -- I have no right to talk of politics; I'm an entertainer -- but as an old friend of Cuba, not a newcomer, five years I've been coming here and speaking of Cuba -- you are a good neighbor to me personally. You live right up there. Does he understand? And you're night noisy. [BACKGROUND CONVERSATION] And you're not noisy. And you have not come down to borrow any sugar. You have been a good neighbor. [BACKGROUND CONVERSATION]

FIDEL CASTRO: Okay.

JACK PAAR: And I know how tired you are, and I know how many questions you have been asked--

FIDEL CASTRO: Ah -- mind you can ask all that you want for the public opinion of the United States about anything you want.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Today, that might sound like pandering. But back then, his probing for humanity was a revelation. Now that's practically all there is, which brings us to this week's significant media departure. After a quarter of a century, ABC's Barbara Walters is leaving her perch at 20/20. Walters is a modern master of the personal probe. She's applied it to nearly every famous figure of our day, from John Wayne to Hillary Clinton.

BARBARA WALTERS: [READING] "You're right. I could hardly breathe. I started crying and yelling at him. What are you saying? Why did you lie to me?" What did your husband say? How did he explain it?

HILLARY CLINTON: He just kept saying that he was very sorry, over and over again. And I could tell that he was, but that wasn't much comfort. I was still-- furious. And-- stayed furious for quite some time. But he just kept saying over and over again, you know, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Walters was both loathed and admired for posing questions we wouldn't dare to ask. But she was stunningly successful, and her signature style spawned a generation of ham-handed imitators. Witness Diane Sawyer's recent sit-down with the Drs. Dean. Watching guests quail under such sledgehammer questioning, we pity the subjects, hate the journalists and are embarrassed for ourselves. Such journalistic excess has its roots in Jack Paar's gentle innovation, but he was no journalist. Walters' trademark moment was to wait quietly while her subjects wept over remembered pain. Paar did not elicit tears. But if he had, he probably would have cried along with his guest. He didn't sit in silent judgment on private lives, as journalists often do. [THEME MUSIC]

BOB GARFIELD:That's it for this week's show. On the Media was directed by Katya Rogers and produced by Janeen Price, Megan Ryan and Tony Field, engineered by Dylan Keefe and Rob Christiansen, and edited by Brooke. We had help from Derek John and the entire engineering staff of NPR West. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Arun Rath is our senior producer and Dean Cappello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and get free transcripts and MP3 downloads at onthemedia.org, and email us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. This is On the Media, from NPR. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield.

copyright 2004 WNYC Radio

About On The Media

WNYC’s weekly investigation into how the media shapes our world view. Veteran journalists Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield give you the tools to survive the media maelstrom.

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